LomoKino Film Camera Shoots Lo-Fi Movies

04.11.2011
Lomo, the purveyors of Soviet-era film cameras, have already brought us of panoramas, fish eyes, burst shot action. Now they are now going into video Lomography. Meet the , a hand cranked 35-mm movie camera.

The LomoKino can shoot 144 frames onto a 36-exposure reel of film; couple that with a frame rate of 3 to 5 per second, and you've got about 28-48 seconds of footage. The camera is equipped with a fixed 25-mm lens that can be set at an aperture f/5.6 to f/11. It also has a screw point for tripods and a hot shoe for flashes, but no microphone, so you better get a microphone if you want to start making some talkies.

Of course, the camera is still all about being artsy, and with some film development tricks, it can produce effects like a saturated slide film, red scale, color negative, or black and white. It's also still got those toy camera looks, so expect the usual light leakage, blurring, purple fringing around really bright light, and vignetting corners.

To view your Lomography movies, you'll need to take your developed and uncut film (ask the film lab to not cut the film) through Lomo's specialized LomoKinoScope. Alternatively you could scan the film and run the images through movie editing software.

Lomo already has a of what the LomoKino can do, but my personal favorites are the black and white films, which looks perfect for some old school monster films. Now where's my iguana?

The LomoKino alone will cost $79 ($100 with the LomoKinoScope package), and both will start shipping on November 9th.